A Case for Department-Based Professional Development Sites for Secondary Teacher Education

Proposals for professional development schools rarely distinguish between elementary and secondary schools. The high school department, rather than the school as a unit, may be a more appropriate and productive focus for secondary level university-school collaboration aimed at achieving the goals of the professional development school for three reasons: Initiating and managing the complexity of whole school-university collaboration may be overwhelming; the goals pursued by faculty schoolwide are different from and potentially less productive than those of dynamic departments; and departmental goals are more consistent with the collegial and content-in-context needs of beginning teachers. We use the 9-year experience of a collaborative, master's level, internship-based secondary teacher education program and especially recent collaboration with the science department of a metropolitan high school to illustrate the potential of department-based professional development sites.